The ceiling fan slowly moving air around the room did a piss-poor job of cooling her warm, damp skin. She needed a shower . . . and sleep.
Neither of which was going to happen in her current location.
Sasha stretched one long leg down the muscled length of the man lying beside her. Her eyes traveled up his thigh to the round globe of his chiseled ass. A tattoo covered his chocolate skin at his hip and expanded the length of his back and shoulders.
Firm.
That was the best way to define him.
His teeth grazed her shoulder, pulling her back to reality.
“You’re leaving,” he said as if he were accusing her.
Her resigned sigh told him what he already knew.
Sasha swiveled her feet to meet the floor and stood.
He watched.
His eyes burned into her back when she bent down to retrieve her dress. She slipped it over her head and picked up the small clutch she claimed to be a purse. It wasn’t. Not really. All it held was a single key and a tube of lipstick.
And a condom . . . but that was gone now.
“I’m not going to see you again, am I?”
She slipped into her four-inch-heeled boots and walked back to the bed.
His eyes watched the sway of her hips as she approached.
“Thanks for the workout,” she said, her voice husky.
With a brief touch of lips, she stood, turned on her heels . . . and walked out of the man’s life.
Graffiti covered the staircase taking her down to the ground floor, the smell of something she didn’t want to name lofted from the corner of the final landing leading her outside.
Outside, the air moved.
Hot, unwelcoming air . . . but it moved.
The sun had set hours before, but the humidity of Rome was thicker than normal for late summer.
Sasha rolled her head from side to side and welcomed the feel of her lax muscles.
She was tired, she thought to herself.
And bored.
“Bella!” Someone called from a group of five men . . . boys, gathered under the streetlight next to a bar still in full swing.
Sasha kept walking.
Four blocks and she found her ride.
She slid the key from her bag and turned over the engine. After pushing her head into the helmet, she did a quick check around her and sped off down the street.
Heads turned as she drove by.
A woman in a short black dress, wearing come-screw-me boots, and driving a motorcycle had a way of making people look. If she were being honest with herself, she’d say she liked the attention.
Maybe that was why she did it. It wasn’t like she couldn’t have rented a car when in Italy. Or anywhere she traveled. Instead, she drove a bike. Only in winter did she switch up her transportation.
Bikes had more versatility. Much easier to follow or lose anyone who might be on her tail.
Only no one was.
Hence the part where she reminded herself that she was bored.
She split lanes in traffic, skirted through a yellow light, and dashed over a bridge leading to a much nicer area of Roma.
You would think a city as ancient as Rome would have a better grip on the blithe that filled every block.
But no.
Outside the ancient city, and the parts heavily monitored to keep vandals from tagging stones built thousands of years before, Rome was tattered with graffiti and evidence of misspent youth.
She skidded to a halt outside her hotel, parked her bike just past the valet, swung her leg off to one side, and removed her helmet.
The attendant eyed her as she walked to the glass doors.
“Excusa.”
She caught the kid’s eye, and he switched to English. “You can’t leave your bike there.” His eyes traveled her frame as he spoke.
Sasha tossed the single key in the air.
He caught it.
“Room 610,” she told him.
He looked at the key, then back at her, and shook his head.
Inside, the hotel’s air-conditioning did what the night air couldn’t. It dried and cooled her skin.
Once in the elevator, she reached for a hidden pocket in her boot and removed the key card to her room.
Locking the door behind her, Sasha dropped her key on the foyer table, unzipped one boot at a time, and stepped out of them, leaving a path through the living room of her suite and into the bedroom. She discarded her dress on the bed and moved straight to the shower.
The water started out cold, blasting her with sensation up and down her spine to the very tips of her fingernails. Slowly it warmed, and she turned around and washed the memory of her temporary lover from her skin.
Once out of the shower, she toweled her hair dry and then spread out, naked, on her bed.
The blinds to her hotel room were open and the view of Rome, lit up in the night sky, was a feast for the eyes.
She’d flown to Italy on a whim . . . a restless impulse that had turned into two weeks and three different hotels. She should probably move on. The evening receptionist had smiled and waved at her when she had walked by earlier that night. It wasn’t in Sasha’s nature to let people recognize her.
She asked herself why . . . Why move on? It wasn’t like anyone was looking for her. She wasn’t searching for anyone. Wasn’t protecting a single soul.
She closed her eyes and attempted to still her mind. She’d been tired an hour ago.
Her fingers tapped against the bed.
She concentrated on the noise of the fan blowing cool air around the room. White noise.
Sleep.
If only she had something to wake early for.
Knowing that she had nothing to occupy her time the following day, or week . . . or even year, kept her from being able to rest.
Nothing.
It was nearly four in the afternoon on the West Coast of the United States, dinnertime in Texas, where Trina and Wade resided with their infant daughter, Lilliana.
Sasha opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.
The quiet was killing her.
She reached for her cell phone, charging on the nightstand, and dialed Reed.
“What did I do to deserve a call from you today?”
Reed never answered a call from her with hello.
Sasha tried not to smile. “Nothing, I’m certain.”
“Yet here you are. Where are you?”
He always asked.
She never told.
“Nowhere close. Are you a father yet?” Reed’s wife, Lori, was expecting twins sometime in the next month, and with his world preoccupied, perhaps the security firm he worked with could use an extra hand. She wouldn’t ask if Reed needed help, she never did. She simply checked in with him on occasion, and he would volunteer a need if there were one. On rare occasions, he would search her out. She could count on three fingers the times that had happened.
“Not yet. I’m not afraid to say that just the thought of the next year scares the crap out of me.”
Now Sasha did smile. Reed didn’t scare easy, and he most certainly didn’t admit to it. “Sounds like you have everything under control.”
Reed paused. “How are you? You don’t sound like yourself.”
She dropped her smile, lifted her chin. “I’m making sure you haven’t screwed something up since I saw you last.”
“And when was that?” he asked. “I never can tell if you’re watching me from behind a pair of binoculars.”
“Binoculars . . . how very adolescent.” Obviously, everything was fine.
No need for her.
“You know how to contact me,” she said and pulled the phone away from her ear to disconnect the call.
“Wait!”
A spark of hope flared in her chest.
“Yes?”
“We want you to come after the babies are born. Visit. Trina and Wade will be here with Lilly. The holidays are just around the corner.”
Sasha didn’t do social visits. “Perhaps, if I’m available.” She’d be available, but she wouldn’t go.
Reed’s voice told her he knew she wouldn’t. “The invitation is always open.”
Sasha hung up without saying goodbye.
She walked to the window of her room, uncaring if anyone could see her nudity through the glass.
Things needed to change.
Memories of her younger years surfaced. She was only a short distance away from where she spent all of her formative years. A place that had molded her into the restless woman she had become. Perhaps some time there would help her find focus.
Germany . . .
With her mind made up, she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.
The invitation is always open.
On the outside, Richter appeared like any other boarding school dotting the landscapes of Europe. The name alone should have shed light on the kind of education one would expect inside the fortress-thick walls of the main buildings and twelve-foot-tall fence that surrounded the fifty-acre grounds. But instead of the German word for judge making people scratch their heads and ask questions, most believed that a judge had at one time sent their child to the school and offered a large donation for the right to the name.
Richter only took in troubled kids.
Troubled rich kids.
At least that’s what the brochure implied.
Sasha drove her motorcycle up to the locked and guarded gates of Richter and stopped when the stern-faced uniformed “greeter” stepped out of his box.
She lifted the visor of her helmet and met his unsmiling eyes. “Headmistress Lodovica.”
“And you are?”
“Sasha Budanov.”
Placing her visor back over her eyes, she turned toward the gates, expecting them to open. When they did, she gunned her bike and sped through the familiar tree-lined drive to the main entrance of the school.
A splattering of children followed her path with turns of their heads, but they never stopped moving to stare.
Always in motion.
One of the many things Richter had taught her.
She left her helmet dangling off the handlebars and swung one long, leather-clad leg off the back. Her neck stretched as she looked up at the five stories of the main hall. It hadn’t changed. Even the shrubs surrounding the stone building didn’t appear to have grown.
Some people had told her that when they returned to their childhood homes after extended periods away, the houses looked smaller.
So why was it that Richter looked just as imposing now as it did then?
Cutting off her thoughts, Sasha climbed the vast steps to the ten-foot ornately carved wooden doors.
They opened before she could grasp the handle.
Her lips lifted into a rare grin. “Charlie. I can’t believe you’re still here.” Her heart swelled with warm memories of the man standing in front of her.
“That’s Checkpoint Charlie to you, Miss Budanov.”
The irony always made her grin. The man in charge of assuring that anyone entering the doors of Richter belonged had been dubbed Checkpoint Charlie long before Sasha attended the school. The fact that he was German and not American, but spoke with a perfect American accent, had all the students wondering if he was an international spy. Truth was, none of them knew if Charlie was even his real name.
She approached with her hands at her sides. They didn’t hug . . . it wasn’t allowed.
“You look well, Sasha.”
“As do you. Keeping everything protected here, I see.”
“No one comes in, or out, without me knowing.”
Sasha tilted her head to the side.
Charlie’s playful smile slid. “Not since you rappelled off the north wall, crossed the grounds without hitting one sensor, and scaled the fence before calling Headmistress Lodovica from twenty miles away to tell her she needed to tighten her security.”
Sasha forced down the pride she felt with the memory.
“I couldn’t let that French twit . . . what was his name?”
“Mr. Dufort.”
“Right . . . Pierre Dufort.” Her male antagonist in her final year at Richter. “I couldn’t let him challenge me and not deliver.”
Charlie shook his head and lowered his voice. “The senior class has attempted every year since, and has yet to repeat your actions.”
“That’s too bad.”
He scowled. “How so?”
“That either means your students are unworthy or your teachers are slipping.” Sasha felt the smile in her eye as she turned.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said.
She paused. Was she back?
Shaking the question from her head, Sasha walked down the overgrown hall to the administration offices.
The quiet space of the teachers’ area at the school did seem as if it had shrunk. A receptionist she didn’t recognize greeted her. “Miss Budanov?”
“Yes.”
“The headmistress is ready for you.”
She tried not to show surprise. The headmistress didn’t drop everything for anyone. Since Sasha came unannounced, she expected to wait at least a short time.
Her eyes glanced toward the office of the woman in charge. “Thank you.”
Sasha hesitated at the door. Should she knock?
The buzz of the door being unlocked by the receptionist answered her question.
Sasha lifted her chin and turned the knob.
An unfamiliar chill of the unexpected washed down her spine and brought gooseflesh to her arms. Usually those sensations would be met with Sasha watching her back and pulling a weapon from wherever it was hiding. Only that wasn’t necessary here.
Passing through the threshold flooded her with memories.
The poised and elegant woman behind the desk was exactly how Sasha remembered.
“Sasha. What an unexpected pleasure.” Headmistress Lodovica stood. In black dress pants and a long-sleeve button-up blouse, her clothing choices hadn’t changed. Behind her desk was a coat stand; on it was a hanger where she draped her robe. Sasha had seen the woman without her robe, but it was a very rare occasion.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
She rounded the desk. For one brief, frightening moment, Sasha thought the woman was going to hug her.
Instead the headmistress indicated a sofa on the far end of her office. “I’m anxious to hear what has brought you back to our halls.”
They both sat, and the headmistress crossed her slim legs at her ankles and rested her hands in her lap. The woman had to be in her midforties, maybe even older, but she didn’t look a day over thirty.
“I’m anxious to discover what has me here as well, Headmistress.”
“I think we can do away with the formalities, Sasha. You are no longer a student, and I am no longer your headmistress. My name is Linette. Please feel free to use it.” Those perfect lips and high cheekbones spread into a smile, something Sasha had seen less than five times.
Sasha took a deep breath.
“I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
“Coming from the woman who handed down punishment for addressing her as anything but Headmistress . . .”
“You, of all my students, know that control is easily lost when respect is absent.”
It was Sasha’s turn to return a slight grin. “Yes, I remember well. I wasn’t punished for escaping the grounds, but for addressing you simply as Lodovica when I called you from the pub.”
“One of my proudest moments.”
Sasha narrowed her eyes. “You put me in solitary for five days.” Solitary sounded as bad as it was. Like any prison, the room was dark and soundproof. It was meant to intimidate and break a person. It often did.
“For your lack of respect, not for the act. Besides, I’m aware that Charlie offered some relief.”
He had. For an hour every night she was able to breathe fresh air and eat a real meal.
“Is Charlie his real name?”
“Is that why you’re here? To answer the questions of Richter that don’t need to be asked?”
Sasha shook her head. “I learned who my benefactor was two years ago.”
Linette raised her eyebrows. “I was sworn to secrecy.”
“I know. My father is dead.”
“I’m aware.”
That surprised her. “You knew who he was the whole time?”
Linette nodded. “Of course. I am in charge of the safety of the students here. Not an easy task with a parent that would just as soon see you dead. Why do you think we pushed you so hard?”
“Because I was difficult.”
“Willful, not difficult. I knew that the day would come when you’d learn the truth of your parentage and need to protect yourself.”
Memories surfaced of the one and only time she addressed her father, on the day he attempted to kill her. He nearly succeeded.
Sasha’s hand moved to her neck. The pain of her recovery from his hands attempting to snap her windpipe turned her cold.
Silence filled the room.
When she looked up, Linette’s practiced stoic expression replaced whatever smile had been there before.
“Students return to Richter for one of three reasons. Answers, refuge, or direction. Which are you?”
An unfamiliar knot caught in the back of her throat.
“All three.”